1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a super-resolution device and method.
2. Description of the Related Art
TVs or displays having a large number of pixels and high resolution are now in widespread use. These TVs or the displays convert a number of pixels in the image data into a number of pixels of a panel when displaying an image. In the conversion of super-resolution for increasing the number of pixels, a multiple frame deterioration reverse conversion method is conventionally used for obtaining an image sharper than what is possible with a conventional linear interpolation method (for example, see U.S. Pat. No. 6,285,804, S. Park, et al. “Super resolution Image Reconstruction: A Technical Overview,” IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, USA, IEEE May 2003, p. 21-36), the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference).
Taking advantage of the fact that the photographic subject which comes out in a reference frame also comes out on another frame, the multiple frame deterioration reverse conversion method detects the movement of the photographic subject with a high degree of accuracy at a pixel interval or lower and obtains a plurality of sample values in which the position is minutely shifted with respect to an identical local position of a photographic subject.
In the multiple frame deterioration reverse conversion method, a number of low-resolution images are necessary to obtain a sufficient number of sample values, and hence the amount of memory increases. There is also a problem that it is necessary to obtain the relation of a number of corresponding points by a search process of block matching, and hence the amount of computation increases.